How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 247
ln the quoted example the consultant is feeding into the system his own reading of an ongoing transaction.
Sometimes a structural family therapist uses information provided by the family as the building materials for his
frame. Minutes later in the same session, the mother comments: “But we try to make her do it,” and the father
replies “I make her do it.” Minuchin highlights then this brief interchange by commenting on the differences
that the family is presenting: mother can not make her do it, father can. The initial “reality” described just in
terms of the girl’s “uncontrollability” begins to be replaced by a more complex version inv9lving an ineffective
mother, an undisciplined child, and maybe an authoritarian father.
The consultant is reframing in terms of complementarity, a typical variety of the reframing technique, in which
any given individual’s behavior is presented as contingent on somebody else’s behavior. The daughter’s
uncontrollability is related to her mother’s ineffectiveness which is maintained by father’s taking over— which,
on the other hand, is triggered by mother’s ineffectiveness in controlling the daughter. Another example of
reframing through complementarity is the question “Who makes you feel depressed?” addressed to a man who
claims to be “the” problem in the family because of his depression.
As with all other techniques employed in structural family therapy, reframing is based on an underlying attitude
on the part of the therapist. He needs to be actively looking for structural patterns if he is going to find them and
use them in his own communications with the family. Whether he will read the 5-year-old’s misbehavior as a
function of her own “uncontrollability” or of a complementary pattern, depends on his perspective. Also, his
field of observation is so vast that he can not help but be selective in his perception; whether he picks up that “I
make her do it” or lets it pass by, unnoticed amidst the flow of communication, depends on whether his selective
attention is focused on structure or not. As with joining, as with unbalancing, reframing requires from the
therapist a “set” without which the technique can not be mastered.
The reframing attitude guides the structural family therapist in his search of structural embeddings for
“individual” problems. In one case involving a young drug addict, the therapist took advantage of the sister’s
casual reference to the handling of money to focus on the family’s generosity toward the patient and the
infantile position in which he was being kept. In another case, involving a depressed adolescent who invariably
arrived late at his day treatment program, the therapist’s reframing interventions led to the unveiling of a pattern
of overinvolvement between mother and son: she was actually substituting for his alarm-clock. In an attempt to
help him she instead was preventing him from developing a sense of responsibility.
The intended effect of reframing is to render the situation more workable. Once the problem is redefined in
terms of complementarity -for instance, the participation of every family member in the therapeutic effort
acquires a special meaning for them. When they are described as mutually contributing to each other’s failures,
they are also given the key to the solution. Complementarity is not necessarily pathological; it is a fact of life,
and it can adopt the form of family members helping each other to change. Within such a frame, the therapist
can request from the famil